Tag: Granville Island

Sunday afternoon/evening in Vancouver, Canada and today I am just relaxing and enjoying the great weather and the beautiful sea. There was the opportunity to go swimming with a friend of mine today but I didn’t feel like doing that. After a few days full of sports, it is always good to calm down a little once in a while and let the muscles relax a bit. So no sports today…. Probably again tomorrow, though…

Last week, quite of few very interesting things happened. On Sunday, I helped Verena to move her stuff from her old apartment in Burnaby to the new one in Vancouver. That was no big effort as Work&Travelers usually only have 2 suitcases of stuff and that’s it. So we were finished with that pretty quickly. Then, we decided to visit Granville Island, south of Vancouver Downtown. This island is famous for its galleries and artist and although it was Sunday, most of the galleries and shops were open. Which was great because we got to see some really nice art and get an impression of what the artists are doing on the island. In the afternoon, Verena had to go to work so I explored the island a little more on my own. They also have a quite huge Public Market there which hosts many different food shops. And some of them even have German names and offer German food. So I had to take a picture of that and share it with you, see below. Not sure that all of the food they offer there is truly German but it is hard to tell for me now since the picture I took is a bit blurred. Anyway, after a longer tour of the food court I decided to watch the first half of the Super Bowl in a pub before I drove to Richmond to play at a board game evening at Jen’s place. It was truly great to meet everyone there and play some really nice games I had not known before, including Carcassonne. Unfortunately, I forgot to make a picture of that game so I can’t share it here with you. Bummer. But I also met Teddy at Jen’s place and he is a cuddly and friendly cat that seemed to like me as well. Especially because I gave him some treats and Teddy likes treats! 🙂 Thanks again for the invitation and the lovely evening, Jen!

Entrance to Granville Island, south of Vancouver downtown.The Public Market on Granville Island, sprawling with food shops and visitors.The “Kaisereck”- takeaway, with German flag and food. Feels like home? Well, not really…. 🙂Enjoying the fist half of the Super Bowl 51 at the bar of a pub in Granville Island.

On Monday, I started scanning the BC- job market again and I also took my time to analyze how to increase my chances of getting a decent job quickly. In the end, I think I need to solve the following problem in order to be more successful with my applications: As I currently only have a working permit for one year, many HR managers are probably reluctant to consider me for an open position. Why is that? Well, most of the HR managers are probably looking for a long-term replacement for their job openings and not for a temporary one. At least this is what I would do if I was an HR manager. And this is also what I did when I was in charge of hiring customer assistants for my stores in Germany and England. You don’t want anyone who will only be available for a short time and who is then going to leave again quickly. The time investment for new employees is huge in the beginning and the benefit of that must be negative if the new employee leaves again quickly and you need to start hiring again. That does not make much sense. So I figured that I will probably only have a good shot at a decent job if I can convince people that I will be staying longer in Canada than the current projected year. Thus, I checked out Canada’s immigration website to find out if I am eligible to apply for permanent residency. Luckily it turned out that I am already eligible to apply for that if I pass an English test. Possibly my chances to get the permanent resideny would be better if I already had a job but this is probably a two-sided problem that cannot be solved: Without a decent job, it will be more difficult to get a permanent residency but without a permanent residency, it will be more difficult to get a decent job. Not much I can do about that other than to try to get either of the two as quickly as possible and then try to get the other one afterwards. Thus, I then decided to sign up for an English- test for immigrants on Friday and I was there on time to take it. The test went okay but I am almost certain I made more than just a few mistakes. Now I have taken a few English- tests before in my life but in this one the questions were quite difficult and some of the topics and vocabulary used were rather special. Like urban city-planning and details of an art festival. Oh well, I will see how I did in the test in about a week when they will send me the results. And If I failed, I can always take the test again, I don’t worry about that really. But if I pass, I will definitely apply for the permanent residency and see if the Canadian government wants me here permanently or not… In the meantime, I wrote some more applications last week and I got good feedback from my application as a senior store manager. Of course, senior store manager would be a step down from my former position as an area manager but I guess I am still willing to accept that to gain a foothold in the Canadian job market. We’ll see how this whole situation develops…

And what else happened during the week? I went to the board game evening in the local game store on Wednesday and I did some serious running training in the last days, despite the snow here in the lower Mainlands. Also, Whippcream and I got a visit from a rather unfriendly neighbor cat and the cute fuzzy white girl was pretty upset about that. I guess I’ll have to pay good attention in the future if I let her out on the deck. Last thing I need are two fighting cats and a necessary visit to the animal hospital. Then, on Friday Verena and I did some climbing and that was a lot of fun and really interesting. The only problem was that you need some well trained arms in order to do proper climbing. Now that is a problem in my case because the only muscles that are really well trained in my body are my leg muscles. Thus, after roughly an hour of bouldering and climbing, I could already feel the ache in my forearms and I started losing power in my hands. Verena was actually doing a lot better than me and she managed to finish one of the easier climbing routes successfully whereas I twice had to let go two steps below the “finish line”. Sometimes it just sucks to be as old as I am. Especially when your body needs a lot longer to recover from the muscular strain than it used to just a few years ago. Oh well. In any case, it was a lot of fun to go climbing and I can see myself doing that regularly in the future if my place of work/ future apartment will be somewhere near a climbing center. After the climbing, we went to the Brett Martin Show in the YukYuk’s comedy club and it was as great as always. If I don’t get to stay in Vancouver in the futurer, I will definitely miss this location. It offers really great entertainment on a regular basis and I just love it.

Snowy beach and a flock of ducks straight ahead.No way these two cats will ever be friends. Good thing the glass door is pretty solid.The “easy” yellow route we climbed. Every route has its own colors and if you want to climb properly, you are only allowed to use steps of one color = “stay in a route”.Brett Martin (on the very left od the picture) and his crew on 11/02/17 at YukYuk’s Vancouver.

Today’s music advise is a bit different from the previous ones. When listening to some rock music during my running sessions last week, I realized that two of my favorite bands, Saxon and Motörhead, each made a song called “Dogs of war”. So I thought it would be a great idea to make a double- header advice here: